THe POOL OF NARCIS SUS W HEN the Muschenheim lim- ousine slid up to the curb, like a great, rolling onyx, it had hardly stopped before the chauffeur, in broadcloth cerements, leaped out and flourished open the door. Mrs. M u- schenheim emerged slowly, her enor- mous bulk divided and encircled with ruchings, the elegiac balloon of velvet that compressed her black pompa- dour looking like the knob on the chess queen. Hester, watching intently from a cramped stone niche in the courtyard entrance, where she had been sitting in Sunday-afternoon stiffness, knew that this arrival was the signal that the birth- day party at the Reuters' was about to begin. \Vhile Mrs. Muschenheim stared hefore her with majesty, the chauffeur reverently brought forth sev- eral cakeboxes of a whiteness and size that drew awed murmurs from the kids around the entrance, then bore them smartly behind his employer as she lum- bered through the courtyard and into the apartment house on her way up to the Reuters', on the ninth floor. Hester could never decide which at- tracted her more-the elaborate sweets or the solemn pageantry of the Reuter family life. Sometimes she was given tastes from the boxes of mocha torte or glazed cherries when Clara, the fifteen-year-old granddaughter of the Reuters, descending to Hester's twelve- rear level on bored, boyless afternoons, asked her upstairs, and the two of them hovered hopefully on the periphery of the stately orgies of pastry, coffee, and talk. The Reuters belonged to the solid phalanx of upper-middle-class German- burgher families that moved in its own orbit in N ew York. During the first World War, ju t past, the women had learned to knit by the jerky Ameri- can method and had bought Liberty Bonds stolidly, but through this period, as always, they lingered over the coffee- pot on smoky winter afternoons, did their hair leaning over rivulets of scal- loped dresser scarves made by the daugh- ters of the house, and married off their sons and daughters to one another-not by compulsion but through the graceful pressure of cocoa parties together at the 2-ge of ten and dinner parties at the age of twenty. Hester. detached herself painfully from_ her cold seat, permitted herself one superb glance around at the other kids, who did not share her entree, and followed Mrs. Muschenheim in, just slowly enough not to catch the same elevator. She went up to her own family's apartment, four floors below the Reuters', and scurried back to her room, sliding off her coat. Because of the inactivity of Sunday afternoon, her new dress was still fresh. Ramming her barrette to a firmer hold on her hair, she burrowed in her bureau drawer for the tissue-wrapped handkerchief that would serve as her ticket of admittance to the birthday party. Holding it by its rosette of ribbon, she slipped out of the apart- ment, climbed the four flights to the Reuters' floor, and rang the bell. Clara opened the door. "Oh, h'lo, Hester," said Clara, her eyes on the little package. "'S for your mother's birthday," Hester muttered, and thrust the pack- age at her. "Oh, thank you, Hester! She'll be pleased," said Clara with sweet artifi- ciality. Both were aware that a hand- kerchief was not to be considered a real present but, rather, a kind of party cur- rency. Then Clara dropped her adult tone. "Listen! Guess what!" she said, and hurried Hester along the hall to- ward her mother's bedroom. Going past the piles of tissue paper and ribbon on the waxed foyer table, turning her head to peer back through the living- room doorway at the people gathered ffi >>2-..:-..,w-":-",,,'........::..: ..J'.. mO"'" ;i * .1i. lli : :-:.:. .;.;-: 33 inside, Hester thought there was no place for a party like the Reuters', where all the material panoply of life was treated with such devotion. B OTH Mrs. Reuter, the grand- mother, and her sister, Mrs. Enke, rivalled Mrs. M uschenheim in size. Their mammoth hips swelled like hoop skirts under their made-to-order dress- es. Behind her nose glasses, Mrs. Reu- ter's enlarged blue eyes melted inno- cently in the genial arrangement of red pincushions that was her face. From Mrs. Enke's more elegant profile, wan folds draped away sculpturally, as be- fitted her long-standing widowhood. In this citadel of women, which includ- ed Clara and her mother, Mrs. Braggi- otti, Mr. Reuter might have felt op- pressed had he not been equally large, and likely to find, on his four-o'clock return from the lace business, various Adolphs and Karls, of severe clothes and superb, gold-linked linen, who had already deserted the garlanded cake plates for a bottle of schnapps, over which they would discuss the market. Once, Hester had even seen the Ger- man consul there, his domed head roll- ing and stretching out on his creased neck like a sea lion accepting the def- erence of the crowd. When, on such occasions, Mrs. Reuter's eyes turned too explicitly to Hester's grubby play dress and battered knees, the two girls , ' . : ?:. ::':"\i:::=::::;:::..::.. ..: :: :",,' ::" .... . w.... i: :i;;. } #.ð;.::.:::;.: / , . , ;':::'. . ,: ::{:! t:: ,:,:w";' : ,.. p. .,' .,, .................. ,;';:. ,"'lot' . , " "'::..': .. ." -- ..-- -. .';.: '.' 't .:::,: ..,.... 0, . .. :.... 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